Examining the Role of AGs in a Just Transition

Abstract

Tackling the climate crisis requires transitioning from fossil fuel to clean energy, which will necessarily have a significant impact on jobs and the economy overall. The impact of this shift has sometimes been feared as a development that will be harmful to workers and the economy. Fossil fuel jobs are seen as good jobs--well-paid jobs with good benefits and protections--while the emerging clean energy industry has not yet uniformly embraced a highroad employment model. But workers’ rights and environmental concerns are not fundamentally incompatible. There are many policies and tools that can be and are being harnessed to bring about a “just transition,” ensuring that the emerging clean energy sector provides high quality jobs and that needs of current fossil fuel workers are also adequately addressed. These policies exist at the intersection of workers’ rights and environmental policy. † Executive Director of the State Energy & Environmental Impact Center and Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. †† Director of the State and Local Enforcement Project at the Harvard Law School Labor and Worklife Program, and Senior Fellow at the Economic Policy Institute. The authors gratefully acknowledge Peter Morgan, senior attorney with the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program, for sharing his expertise on bankruptcy law and providing feedback on an earlier draft. The authors also benefitted greatly from discussing this topic with Sharon Block, Vonda Brunsting, Karen Cacace, Mariah Dignan, Dana Johnson, Zoe Lipman, Walter (Terry) Meginniss, Jonathan Munro-Hernandez, Manveer Sandhu, Dr. Lara Skinner, and Dr. Carol Zabin. We are grateful for the excellent research assistance and comments of Samantha Mehring, Tess Cobrinik, Fatima Ibrahiem, Mohamed Oday, and Colin Parts. All errors are the authors’ own. A version of our recommendations in this Article are included in A Role for State Attorneys General in a Just Transition, a Report authored by us and Tiernaur Anderson, issued in December 2022 by the Harvard Labor and Worklife Program and State Energy & Environmental Impact Center, available at https://stateimpactcenter.org/files/A-Role-forState-Attorneys-General-in-a-Just-Transition.pdf.